It's a tool the military sees as vital to surveillance operations and taking out foreign militants, but on the Central Coast, drones are coming under fire for being both invasive and a clumsy killer.

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"It's been very clear from early in the program that many, many more innocent civilians were being killed by these strikes, [and] particularly children," says Sherry Conable, an organizer with the Santa Cruz Peace Activists.

Conable is among the dozens of people who spent Monday evening protesting in downtown Santa Cruz, carrying signs that urged the president to ground the military's drones - drones Conable says have killed hundreds of innocent children in Pakistan and Yemen.

At the same time, she has a growing concern about drones currently in use here at home.

"A drone flying over a personal home can see right into the windows, I mean can see inside the house itself," says Conable.

She's talking about the drones being flown by government agencies and institutions, along with private drones for personal use. They pose a privacy concern for some, but serve as a surveillance tool for others. Law enforcement uses drones to map out high-risk situations and spy on dangerous suspects; however, despite the possible benefits, the Santa Cruz Police Department isn't buying in just yet.

"At some point there may come a need for it, but again I tend to look at the efficacy of it; right now I don't see that really being worth the amount of money that you would need to spend," says Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark.

A single drone outfitted for a police or sheriff's department costs tens of thousands of dollars says Clark but someone looking to just fly a civilian style drone around the neighborhood can get one for much less according to University of California Santa Cruz Associate Professor Gabriel Elkiam.

"The cost has been dropping a great deal and also the level of capability within the hobbies drones have come up a great deal," he says.

It adds up to more drones in the hands of more people and mounting questions and worries about who's watching who. Those worries are not going unnoticed by lawmakers. Eleven states are considering various restrictions and the Santa Cruz Peace Activists say they've already had discussions with Santa Cruz city council members about getting a drone ban on the agenda.

"It's definitely being talked about as a strategy that we might pursue here," says Canable. "We've had some brief conversations with some local elected officials to see what kind of will there might be putting this onto the agenda here."